Paul

As requested, some of my experiences.

To start. I only have about 6 Homeworkers (at the moment) to worry about. The current setup is Nortel Home Office down an ISDN line for voice and ADSL for data. Over the past year I have been experimenting internall with VoIP. The logical progression was to see how well it works over ADSL.

Now this caused a lot of headaches. All internal issues. Probably as a lot of others on this site I do not have full control of the company LAN/WAN. So when trying o put Voice data through our VPN and Firewalls I had a lot of battles to win. Luckily the projected cost savings gave a lot of incentive.

Once the routes through the VPN and Firewalls were opened the VoIP couldnt have been easier.

Initial tests, using an old laptop down a slowish (256k) adsl link were none too good. What I discovered with our softphone was that PC power was more inmportant than bandwith.

Once I got a new machine I achieved good quality voice. Only times I got problems was when forgetting on BB I opened large apps down the VPN. get a little breakup.

I will be going live in a couple of weeks with a full time customer facing(?) homeworker. Purely on broadband. Projected savings over a standard homeworker of about £200/month + Savings on ISDN line install/rental+Interface box + Physical phone. Estimated 1st year saving approx £2,900. This is on an initial investment of about £4000 to start looking at VoIP. Easy return.

Home this helps. Feel free to contact me via the VMail here if you want to discuss further.